Interesting article I found on the idea of social networks
also about connection. It is entitled A World I Don't Inhabit: Disquiet And Identity In Second
Life And Facebook. Which specifically looks at Facebook and how it effects
students in a Higher education setting and how it potentially can create a a
second world through the use of an online space. The article says we can create
a “new world in which to re/create ourselves, re/imagine our relationship to
others and re/evaluate what is real and unreal.” This concept is not a new one.
People are able to use the social network to create a false identity, maybe
even create someone they like more, or someone they think others will like
more. How does this affect the educational environment? This article is
actually studying two students within the higher education environment and
their response to the social network. It was published in 2009 so I may be able
to find an update on this type of study. But it goes on to say that “The
ambivalence of identity leads ultimately to low, even artificial, levels of
engagement” that take place on the social network. Students working on their
higher education are in a vulnerable state, trying to complete their degree
while attempting to define who they are and what they believe. Could the
distraction of a social network, separate them from finding themselves, or even
completing their work to the best of their ability. Could students be more
caught up in what is happening out in the social world, now that they are never
disconnected from it, even when they are, their profile is still out on the
web, that they could become swallowed by it, and not as focused on school work?
"We are keen to discover how the act of creating and
"inhabiting" digital selves within virtual spaces affects not only
what a student learns in these new spaces but also what a student may become in
the process of engagement."
You should definitely read Turkle's book "Alone Together" which makes a similar argument (as you have gathered from the Ted Talk). However, you may also want to consider whether or not the "internet/technology native" generation has simply changed their value system toward a more "privatized" world-view, one in which privacy, autonomy / independence, and an instrumentalist view of others has begun to predominate. It is possible that living life in relation to screens rather than to fully embodied human beings has fostered this new "privatism" -- the term preferred by Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism," a book still worth reading, because it was quite prescient. There are lots of other forces at work that lead to this state of being, and technology (as a commodity) is likely just a means for capitalism to reach into our most private lives, carrying the meme of private interests deep into our way of seeing the world. We can critique that, as Turkle does, but you can also look at how it has changed the way students think about things, including higher education, from an increasingly privatized perspective. Your see, it's not that college has been privatized and that has changed the way students view college. The move toward privatization is happening at multiple levels of society, and students are fully on board with the privatizing mindset.
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